1. Field of the Invention
The technology relates to systems for scanning to determine a febrile condition in a human subject as a preliminary parameter to allow or deny ingress to a protected facility, and more particularly, it relates to a system for accumulating and processing temperature data to identify individuals exhibiting a temperature condition indicating an actual or potential health condition.
2. Description of the Related Art
It has been become increasingly necessary to detect and identify people that may be infected with a contagious illness, whether bacterial or viral. People are very mobile, traveling from city to city and country to country, and that factor makes it even more important to identify infected persons, to prevent or at least minimize the potential for the spread of disease. In recent years there has been mounting concern about such international infectious diseases as SARS in recent years, and concerns about infections transmitted in hospitals, among others. There is a consensus that elimination of transmission of a contagion through detection and isolation of infected individuals may be an effective tool in avoiding the spread of the contagion. However, there does not appear to be a ready solution to the issue of identification of the infected individual.
It is well known that most infectious diseases produce an increase in core body temperature in the host. This is often also the earliest sign of the infection. Accordingly, measuring core body temperature and monitoring it in facilities such as work places, hospitals, school, and other places where large numbers of people congregate or interact may pose a potential for identifying and isolating potentially infected persons and preventing or reducing the risk of transmission of the infection. Measuring core body temperature, unlike measurement of body surface temperature, poses several challenges, however. Core body temperature measurements are typically taken in an invasive procedure, for example, use of an oral thermometer, or infra-red device inserted into an ear cavity. Accordingly, it is challenging to carry out such monitoring on a periodic basis for large groups of people. Indeed, it is quite likely that individuals may resist such procedures. Measuring surface temperature is much easier and can be done via an infra-red scanner. But, merely measuring a surface body temperature is not generally as reliable an indicator of infection because it is influenced by external conditions, such as ambient temperature, clothing, etc. The core body temperature, poses challenges as well because core body temperature varies from one individual to another as an inherent condition of the individual. But, for each individual, core body temperature will increase when an infectious agent is present and the body's defenses are activated in response. Thus, core body temperature is a much better indicator of infection for an individual and may be used with a high degree of confidence for that individual when there is a reliable “base line” of temperature data for that individual.